Capturing the truth

When pedophilia stirs hysteria, truth can be silenced, writes James Norman.

When New York documentary makers Andrew Jarecki and Marc Smerling set out to make a film about children's party entertainers, they stumbled upon a story from the annals of American legal history more heartbreaking than anything they could have imagined.

Jarecki had been pursuing one of New York's most successful party clowns, David Friedman (aka Silly Billy) for months. Things got murky when the filmmakers asked him a harmless question about his childhood. "I have the best memories of my childhood," Friedman began, before trailing off. "There's a lot ... well, there are some things I don't want to talk about."

The interview, on a New York sidewalk, became the starting point of the Sundance Jury Prize-winning, Oscar-nominated documentary Capturing the Friedmans. "We had that interview fairly early on, and figured out that David had a secret story," says producer Marc Smerling.

Capturing the Friedmans has little to do with New York party entertainers and everything to do with David Friedman's secret story. It has to do with the sins of his father, Arnold Friedman, the slippery nature of memory, and the dangers of unchecked media and community hysteria. But mostly, it has to do with the disintegration of a family.

The filmmakers unravelled the story of how Arnold Friedman (1931-1995), father to David, Jesse and Seth, husband of Elaine, came to commit suicide in jail after pleading guilty and being convicted for up to 30 years for child abuse crimes against boys. And how Jesse Friedman, 18 at the time, pleaded guilty as his accomplice and spent 13 years behind bars.

In the pre-internet, pre-reality television era of the late '80s, the inside story of the Friedman family's disintegration was remarkably and shockingly captured on film. They were fans of the amateur home movie, and David Friedman filmed hours of raw footage of his family's destruction, footage that makes reality-TV programs such as The Osborne's look tame and contrived by comparison.

The film splices the family's home movies with extensive interview material from all players in the criminal case against Arnold and Jesse Friedman - remaining family members, the judge, the retired sergeant who led the investigation, and a number of alleged victims, some who deny it ever happened, others who describe the abuse in graphic detail. The viewer is drawn in to an intensely private realm and invited to make their own judgements.

Arnold Friedman was caught by an FBI agent who had been tipped off by the postal department. The agent posed as a postman to deliver a package containing child pornography Friedman had ordered from Amsterdam. Then the authorities discovered Friedman ran after-school computer classes for boys from his home. The alarm bells started ringing.

Soon after, a thanksgiving gathering is interrupted when the doors of the family home are kicked in, the home searched, and Arnold and Jesse are handcuffed and led away through a scrum of reporters and TV crews.

The film takes so many twists and turns that it constantly challenges the viewer to change their position. The facts are revealed to the viewer as they were to the filmmakers, leaving us at the mercy of each new revelation.

One of the criticisms levelled at Capturing the Friedmans is that Arnold Friedman is very much humanised. We see him, through the home movies, playing on the beach with his kids, opening presents, etc.

The film forces you to look at Arnold as a man who is not just a monster, to realise that humans are very complicated beings, says Smerling. "We know he did order the magazine, and we found out later that he did molest these two children up at Wade River. So Arnold Friedman is a criminal who deserved to be punished. But it was certainly the era of hysteria."

Jesse Friedman emerges as the real victim. At one point, the prosecution had gathered more than 400 charges against him. At the time, he felt he had simply "run out of options", and a guilty plea under the US plea-bargaining system seemed his only chance of ever being released.

"I was convicted the moment the police came to our house," Jesse Friedman told The Age. "I met a lot of people in prison who were innocent, took their case to trial and lost. One guy was in for 274 years with no recourse to appeal. I would have lost that trial. I'd still be locked up."

Now 34, Jesse Friedman spent 13 years behind bars and is today electronically tagged and forbidden from living in an apartment where children also stay. "I know that the things my father and I were charged with didn't happen," he says. "I know this because I was there. But my father was a pedophile, he bought child pornography. I can't deny that. I can't condone it, I'm not happy about that fact. Unfortunately, that fact resulted in me getting arrested and charged as a serial child rapist."

Jesse Friedman is fighting to have the case reopened to prove his innocence, and in that regard, the film has helped his case.